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High Tide in Hawaii (Magic Tree House #28): 08/27/10

Sean stopped reading the series with Thanksgiving on a Thursday but we had the next book checked out as well. I read High Tide in Hawaii on my own because I hate to return library books unread.

In High Tide in Hawaii Jack and Annie travel to Hawaii to either an island or a time when the Hawaiians are still living by traditional means. While there they learn how to surf and how to hula. They also survive a tsunami and save the villagers.

As it happened, I read the book right around the same time I was reading Nation by Terry Pratchett. Although the two cover the same subject, different cultures coming together in the face of a tsunami, Nation's approach seems more even handed and well thought out. Of course Nation has about three times as many pages to tell its story but I really wanted more out of High Tide in Hawaii.

The problem is there's just too much going on in too few pages. The book suffers from the same problems as most of the other books where Jack and Annie meet people. The people are there happily living in their own little bubble unaware of the world outside of their existence. Now that might not be how Osborne imagined these characters but that's how they come across. Unfortunately this typically happens in places that have a history of colonization. I don't know if it's to avoid that unsavory topic or if it's just to keep things simple. The result though is yet another "noble savage" to teach Jack and Annie some sort of life lesson which they can then pass onto Morgana or Arthur or Merlin, etc. It quickly becomes tiresome.